


Only a Fool

by toyhto



Series: An Old Fling [4]
Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-22
Updated: 2020-02-22
Packaged: 2021-02-27 20:35:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22851856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toyhto/pseuds/toyhto
Summary: When Jaskier has been dead for twenty years, Geralt goes back home.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Series: An Old Fling [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1626970
Comments: 42
Kudos: 175





	Only a Fool

**Author's Note:**

> So, this is possibly the end of [An Old Fling](https://archiveofourown.org/series/1626970) series. This is a sad little story about how hard it is to give up your grief. But I think there's a little bit hope in this as well. And I feel like this is both about death and life.

He got the letter when he was ready to leave for Kaer Morhen. He had already packed all his bags, and he knew the snow was coming soon, so he had decided to stay for only a day or two and then go. He had a nice room in the inn and people in the town didn’t seem too wary of him, and travelling to the north so late in the fall wouldn’t be a pleasure. He should have left sooner. But when he got the letter, he was glad that he hadn’t.  
  
He hadn’t heard of Marta in five years. Last time he had seen her, she had been travelling far in the south, and he had met her in a local inn, almost by an accident. They had drunk bad ale and talked about nothing for hours, and afterwards, he had felt both worse and better than he had in a long time.  
  
Now Marta was asking him to come to visit. His hands were shaking a little when he put the letter away. There was a small chance that he could go see Marta and still get to Kaer Morhen before the winter. But it would be wiser to write her that he couldn’t come, that he would come the next year instead. Or the year after that. He started the letter but couldn’t finish it, and early the next morning, he started riding. He had a bad feeling in his guts and Roach was sleepy and there was a scent of snow in the wind, but he kept Marta’s letter in his pocket and didn’t think of Kaer Morhen anymore.  
  
  
**  
  
  
He hadn’t been here after the funeral. The town hadn’t changed much. There were a few new buildings and the old ones had grown older, and people staring at him as he rode past them weren’t familiar, the most of them. He thought he recognized some faces, those who were looking at him like he was a ghost from the past. He bit his lip. It had barely been twenty years, and twenty years for him felt like nothing at all, not now that he was getting closer to the house they had called home. Twenty years wasn’t enough. He should have waited more. He should have waited until there was no reason to come back at all. And maybe he would have done exactly that, if Marta hadn’t written to him.  
  
He left Roach in the stable and walked to the house. Marta was at the front door, waiting for him.  
  
“You don’t look older,” Marta said.  
  
“You do,” he said. “I’m jealous.”  
  
“Shut up,” she said and stepped aside from the doorway. “Come in. I didn’t think you’d come.”  
  
“I wasn’t going to,” he said and followed her. The house smelled almost the same. “But you didn’t say in your letter why you wanted to see me.”  
  
“I just had a feeling,” Marta said, walking him through the hallway and to the steps. There she stopped and turned to him. “I’m staying in your old room now.”  
  
He swallowed.  
  
“Sorry.”  
  
“It’s okay. But can we…”  
  
“We can go to the kitchen,” Marta said. “There’s no one else here now. The children are out.”  
  
“The children?”  
  
“Not mine, as you know.” She frowned. “They’re all adults now. But I can’t stop calling them children. Are you going to drink tea if I make it?”  
  
He nodded and followed her to the kitchen, then stood there watching her prepare the tea. She had strands of grey in her red hair and her posture had lost some of its strengths. “I had a feeling,” she said, not looking at him, “that I should see you. In case something happens.”  
  
“Something?”  
  
“I’m getting old.”  
  
“Not yet,” he said as softly as he could.  
  
“Time goes so fast,” she said and glanced at him over her shoulder. “I suppose it goes even faster for you. But the rest of us just have… less of it. Anyway, there’s a good chance that I’ll still live thirty years. But I don’t feel like it. And I wanted to see you.”  
  
He nodded.  
  
“And also,” she said, turning to face him, “I had a feeling about you.”  
  
“Don’t worry about it. It’s going to take a lot to finally kill me.” He tried but couldn’t stop himself from sounding bitter about it.  
  
She was watching at him with narrowed eyes. “Do you know something about death that I don’t? Because you sound like you’re in a hurry. You always did. And I don’t get it.”  
  
He walked to her, took an empty cup and filled it with tea. A long time ago, it had been one of the first things that had made him feel like home in this place: drinking tea with her.  
  
“Geralt,” she said with a tired smile. “Talk to me.”  
  
“It’s just…” He took a sip of his tea. It was too hot. Just like it had been once, a long time ago, when Jaskier had been at the other house, teaching his nephew’s kids to play the lute. None of them had learned. “Once you’ve lost as much as I have, you’ll understand.”  
  
“You’re saying that I could never understand,” she said, “because I’ve lived the third of what you have. Or less. Don’t you remember what he wished for you?”  
  
“Don’t do that,” he said. “Don’t try to use that against me.” It was working, though. It was like a blunt blade pushing through his skin, piercing his guts. He couldn’t move the blade or else he would bleed to death. Only not literally, and that was the fucking problem.  
  
“He wished that you would be happy,” Marta said, looking at him. She was well aware how much it hurt. He wanted to hate her, if only to have something to hate besides death itself. But he couldn’t, of course he couldn’t. She was probably the closest thing that he had to family these days.  
  
“I can’t.”  
  
“It’s not impossible,” she said. “It just takes a little luck. And… and you could let go of your grief.”  
  
“No,” he said. “It’s all that I have left.”  
  
“He never wanted you to keep it.”  
  
“Do you think I don’t know that?” He took a sip of his tea and burned his tongue, and then he sat down in the nearest chair and kept the cup in his hands without drinking. He wished Jaskier would have been here so that he could have grabbed the idiot by his shoulders and shake him and tell him that wasn’t allowed to hope that. He wasn’t allowed to tell Geralt that he wanted Geralt to be _happy_ , to live without him the best he could, to let go and maybe find someone else in the end. He wasn’t allowed to say all those things to Geralt and _mean_ them.  
  
But he had.  
  
And Geralt had slept with him in the bed that had smelled of nearing death; had hold him in his arms and stroked his hair and kissed his face when he was in pain, and sometimes Geralt had even sung the songs Jaskier had made about him a lifetime ago. He was a terrible singer and that was probably why Jaskier had loved it.  
  
Not once had he been able to tell Jaskier that he couldn’t do it. It was impossible, what Jaskier asked of him. He had kept his mouth shut and pretended he agreed; that he would keep on living his life and be sad for a while but then let go of his grief and find something else to care about.  
  
He had found nothing. He had buried Jaskier and left this place and ridden across the continent doing the same things he had always done, trying to tell monsters apart from the rest of them. And it was so unfair that he had lived twice as long as Jaskier and still he hadn’t been allowed to follow him, to go with him, to be buried in the same ground with him, to lay next to him there in cold and quiet. Jaskier had had too little time, it had run out so quickly, and Geralt had too much of it and he wanted to let go of it but couldn’t.  
  
He didn’t believe in gods. He didn’t believe in almost anything. But the older he became, the less certain he was of anything. He didn’t believe in gods, but if there were gods, they didn’t give a shit about if he believed in them or not. And only a fool would have said they knew what happened after death. Only a fool would have been sure that if they put their sword through their heart, the person they had loved the most in this world wouldn’t see it and mourn.  
  
“I don’t want to talk about it,” he said. He sounded breathless and angry and sad and couldn’t help it, but Marta had seen him being all those things before. Marta had been there, when he had refused to let go of Jaskier’s body, and when he had hit his fists against the walls until there had been blood dripping to the floor. “Tell me about you.”  
  
“There’s not much to tell,” Marta said. “After we last met, I travelled for another year and then came back.”  
  
“You didn’t find her.”  
  
“No, I found her,” she said, her voice steady. “She had a family. Two children. A husband. I thought that what we had when we were too young to recognize it, that it had been love. But turns out that I was wrong.”  
  
“You can love two persons in a lifetime,” he said as gently as he could. “Easily. The amount of love you give one isn’t away from the other.”  
  
“But in this case, I was the one who got left behind.” She straightened her shoulders and looked him in the eyes. “Anyway, I haven’t given up on life. If I ever have a chance to love someone again, I will take it.”  
  
“But how will you know?”  
  
She shrugged. “I think I’m going to have to guess. Only time can show us if we’re right or wrong. We only know when the other option has been long gone anyway.”  
  
“Well, I hope you get your happiness,” he said.  
  
“I hope you give up on your wish to die,” she said bluntly, “and live a little.”  
  
“I don’t know if I can.”  
  
“You haven’t tried yet.” She sighed and then stepped to him, put her hand on his shoulder and patted it. “At least try. You owe that much to him. You made him so happy. You can’t give up on happiness only because he’s gone.”  
  
He opened his mouth and then closed it again, then covered her hand with his own for a few seconds. There was no point in telling her that what she asked of him was too much. He was empty now. He couldn’t have done what Jaskier asked even though he had wanted to, and he didn’t.  
  
“Stay for a couple of days,” Marta said, stepping away from him.  
  
“I should leave immediately,” he said, “before the snow comes.” But he didn’t inch.  
  
“Do you remember Leir?” Marta asked. “His kids are teenagers now. They’re terrible. But I bet they’d like to hear your stories.”  
  
“I’m not here to tell stories about monsters.”  
  
“I didn’t mean about _monsters_ ,” she said. “You should tell them about Jaskier.”  
  
He swallowed.  
  
“And you. About the life the two of you had. That you made mistakes and came back to each other and fixed things even though it scared the hell out of you.”  
  
…and brought him only sorrow in the end. That was what kept ringing in his head when he couldn’t sleep. He had loved Jaskier and lost him, and what had he gotten out of it? The sorrow that would last the rest of his life. But even at the darkest nights, he didn’t quite believe that. There had been something else, something that after years was still stronger than all the grief he was now carrying.  
  
He had loved Jaskier, and Jaskier had loved him, and they had been happy.  
  
“Leir used to like my hair,” Geralt said slowly.  
  
Marta grinned at him. He remembered that grin. It hadn’t changed even though everything else had. “Don’t be too disappointed if he doesn’t anymore. He’s grown up and acquired some taste.”  
  
Geralt bit his lip. “You think?”  
  
“And to be completely honest,” Marta said, “you could comb your hair once in a while. You aren’t as pretty as you used to be.”  
  
Thank god, Geralt thought. He would grow old, too. And one day, he would have to let go of his grief, when death would take it away from his hands.  
  
He smiled at Marta and asked for another cup of tea.


End file.
